By Jonathan Louis Duckworth
she prepares her face
to be perfect for death
rouge, a dash of mercury on her cheek
a golden ring for each finger
she decided a long time ago
only the ocean could understand her
constancy of tides,
its thirst for light
slow sighing
the most beautiful corpse she’ll be
when she tips over the balustrade
of her widow’s watch
down to the rocks
communing with the foam
but when the fishing boat finds her
drags her up from the wrack
swaddled in a net
no one will notice her face
against the smell
simple truth
disguised by vanity:
what gives itself to sea
will stink of sea
Jonathan Louis Duckworth is an MFA student at Florida International University and a reader for the Gulf Stream Magazine. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction appears in or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Fourteen Hills, PANK Magazine, Literary Orphans, Cha, Superstition Review, and elsewhere
